


il suo debito

by enigmaticdr



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Florence - Freeform, Helpful Hannibal Lecter, au S3, injured bedelia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:37:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticdr/pseuds/enigmaticdr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bedelia DuMaurier, assuming Mrs. Fell’s identity, suffers the brutal consequences of an unpaid debt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	il suo debito

**Author's Note:**

> This fic goes slightly AU at the start of s3. Situation is the same, events are different.  
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> ps my Italian is completely at the mercy of google translate - so, for those who speak it fluently, I apologize in advance for the butchering

“Lydia Fell?”

The lilting Italian tenor echoed off the clammy macadam of the Florentine street. One of the city’s rare rainy days had culminated in a thin sheen of mist blanketing the alleyway, fog lounging on the colourful rooftops of houses in the cool evening dusk.

It took Bedelia a moment longer than was natural to realize that the voice was addressing _her_. It took her slightly longer than was natural to pause, shift her Versace parcel to her other hand, and glance over her shoulder, sculpted brow raised questioningly.

She flicked a perfectly undulated curl out from inside the high collar of her coat, and appraised the man who had called her name.

He was tall. He wore a blue raincoat and a beige scarf was tied casually around his broad shoulders, his hands resting in the front pockets of his navy jeans. He looked about 30 years old, and exactly like the type of individual Bedelia would have wasted her time on if she were the type of woman who frequented sports bars after midnight.

Like a slender hook, her eyebrow arched in disdain and disinterest. “Yes?”

“I apologize for interrupting your walk, _Signora_ , but I am a great admirer of your husband’s work… _Dottore_ Fell spoke brilliantly last week. I recognize you from the audience.”

Bedelia forced a smile. Hannibal, so eloquent and graceful, in his physique as much as in his words, had certainly charmed the masses with his speech about Dante.

“Thank you, I will be sure to tell him,” she replied, and turned around to continue her walk back to their flat. So tiresome. All of it. The falseness, the pretense, the lying, the mockery of innocence and leisurely life. She knew her time wasn’t up yet, knew Hannibal wasn’t as tired of their game yet as she was, but she felt the inevitable approaching like a charging steam engine. Inside, a  volcano simmered beneath the surface of her skin.

“ _Signora_ , wait,” the man called.

Bedelia eyes fluttered closed with irritation. “Yes?” she asked, still facing away.

“Could I just ask – I am sorry – could you please sign my copy of the program?” His left hand emerged from his pocket holding a slightly crumped evening program from Hannibal’s speech, and the other soon joined with a pen. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Every fibre of her composed being wanted to ignore the man and keep walking. She had no desire to waste her time appeasing his adoration of a man who wasn’t even real.

Unwittingly, she remembered the first public event she attended in Florence with Hannibal, their first display as Lydia and Roman Fell.

_“Lydia,” Hannibal had said as he approached, his arm clasping tightly around her waist as the other guests twirled gracefully around them to the tempo of an allegro waltz. He offered her a slim flute of sparkling champagne._

_She turned her head away from his inquiring gaze and extended hand. He stepped closer, his cologne rubbing onto her dress, his face bowed to bring his lips to the shell of her ear._

_“Could you at least attempt to appear as if you are enjoying yourself?” Hannibal murmured in her ear, as his hand simultaneously caressed her hip._

_She leaned back to meet his gaze with cool, steady blue eyes._

_“I have worked very hard to arrive at our present situation, Bedelia,” he whispered, his lips caressing her ear with every word. “Please do not ruin our good fortune simply because you cannot be bothered to try.”_

_Though Hannibal had been – and continued to be – nothing but the most courteous husband imaginable, his warning was thinly veiled._

Back on the Florentine street, she sighed and resigned herself. She slipped the shopping bag to her forearm, freeing her fingers. She forced another smile. “Of course,” she murmured, removing her gloves.

“Would you mind - ,” the man gestured to the side street, where a shop keeper’s awning offered protection from the light raindrops that had begun to spit from the sky, “ – the rain – I do not want it to smudge…”

“No problema,” Bedelia replied quietly, stepping to the side street and removing her hat once she was under the awning. She reached for the man’s offered pen and paper.

Later, she would hate herself for falling for the ruse so easily.

The man’s hand, back inside his jacket pocket, clearly concealed a firearm whose muzzle was pointed directly in the centre of her chest.

She froze, blue eyes staring into black ones whose coldness rivaled her own practiced frost. Suddenly her coat felt too tight, her face too warm, her feet too light.

“Step forward, into there,” the man spoke, low but steadily. He ushered toward an alleyway off the side street.

Reflexively, she took a step back.

“I wouldn’t disobey, Mrs. Fell.”

The plastic bag in her hand made a crinkling noise as she bunched it across her stomach protectively, fingers shaking.

“Move.” The order was cold and complemented by the unmistakable sound of the safety being clicked off.

Bedelia swallowed and slowly moved forward to where he was indicating. She forced her face into a carefully schooled expression of calm, praying to conceal the rising panic she felt in her throat.

The click of her heels sounded thunderous in the echoing cold of the concrete alleyway. Her heart sunk when she heard the calculated thudding of the man’s running shoes following her deeper into the alley.

From the shadows behind a stack of old crates, two more men of similar appearances emerged.

Bedelia faltered and stopped, instinctively turning around toward the mouth of the alley, and took a step back toward the safety of the street.

The man with the gun curled his hand tightly around her shoulder and pushed her roughly in the direction further into the dank wetness of the alleyway.

“Il mio portafoglio è nella mia borsa,” Bedelia said quickly, dropping her purse on the ground. _My wallet is in my purse._

The man behind her laughed. “Trenta quattro mille euros,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Bedelia replied, her panic mounting as the two men opposite her moved closer. She was caught, surrounded on all sides.

“You owe some money, Mrs. Fell,” the man with the gun said. “Quite a large amount, in fact,” he continued. “And our patience has run out. Mr. Siniscalo sent us to give you his regards.”

“Si,” the other agreed. “Much prettier than we imagined, this one.”

“I don’t understand,” she repeated, her mind racing. She was not Lydia Fell. She had no idea and no control over the actions of the real Mrs. Fell, who was now deceased and who had clearly departed with unfinished business.

The man stepped forward briskly and pushed her sharply and roughly forward, into the other man in front of her, who used her momentum to push her back, propelling her against the third, who then shoved her into the stone wall of the alley. Her back hit the concrete with a muffled thud.

“Prendete il mio portafoglio,” she reeled, trying to catch her stolen breath. _Take my wallet._ “Prendete il mio portafoglio, prendete il mio portafoglio.”

“No, _Signora_ ,” the man replied. “There are consequences for keeping us waiting. You’ve danced well, but it seems you need some incentive to complete the act,” he threatened.

Quickly, he reached up and fisted his hand roughly in her hair, tugging her head back painfully on her shoulders.

“Per favore –,”

She exhaled with an ungraceful, heavy grunt as one of the men standing opposite her swung his arm and punched her low in the stomach.

Before she could recover, he raised his hand and brought it unforgivingly across her face, the ring on his middle finger slicing the skin on her cheekbone like a knife through warm butter. Bedelia closed her eyes and breathed heavily as nausea whirled itself around her senses and dots skated across her glassy vision, unable to help the pained grunts she voiced on each exhale.

She opened her eyes in time to see the second swing coming, flinching hard to brace herself against the overwhelming pain of the man’s steel fist. Nothing could have prepared her for the painful heat that blossomed in its wake, white hot and exploding across her cheekbone, reverberating down her neck and into her chest.

She felt cold water sluice through her veins as her mind retreated inside itself and transported her back to a different country, a different house, a different attack.

She turned her face into the arm that was holding her hair and, finding yielding flesh, bit down as hard as she could. She tasted the blood in her mouth and spat it out in his face.

“Puttana!” the man cried, and dropped his grip on her hair.

The two others made forward immediately, grabbing hastily at her arms. She felt the seam of her blouse rip at the shoulder. She flailed wildly, pushing with all her remaining strength to evade their hold. One man grabbed a discarded plank of wood and hit her hard across her back, knocking the air out of her lungs. The other crunched his fist around her neck, his nails digging into the flesh of her jaw.

The man she had bitten grunted and wrapped both arms around her from behind in a vice-like stranglehold.

Bedelia, remembering what she had learned from her training sessions following her first attack, became a deadweight, dropping unexpectedly down rather than the predictable forwards, and slipped out of the man’s hold. She could only crouch near the ground for a mere second before he fell on top of her, trapping her between his weight and the hard, unforgiving cobblestone street.

She kicked and bucked, attempting to bring her knee to his groin. He pressed her legs down brutally, and she felt her knee tear as he bent it sideways.

She pressed against his ribs with her hands, but they kept slipping across the material of his jacket. Blood, she realized. Her hands were slick with her own blood. And then, her left hand closed around the butt of the gun, which was peeking minutely out from the gap in the zippered pocked of his coat. She pulled it out and pressed it against his ribs, the first place on his body she met.

She fired.

The body on top of her jerked and the man cried out. She fired again, sending another bullet tearing through the man’s lumbar bones and flesh.

Blindly, she aimed at where the two others stood above her, firing recklessly into the air. One of them sprung at her, desperate to seize her weapon. She fired twice at his face, and blinked as blood spatter matted her vision.

The third man turned and ran down the alleyway, tripping over her discarded purse before skidding to the side and disappearing around the corner of a dumpster. Past the deafening ringing in her ears from the adrenaline and the gunshots, Bedelia heard his footfalls grow softer as he ran further away.

She lay panting, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the evening light. She coughed, tasted blood in her mouth, and choked.

She pushed against the dead weight of the lifeless man atop her. Pushing him up, she attempted to slip out from under him. A pain unlike any other radiated through her knee, striking down to her toes and curling upward toward her thigh. Her vision swam and she turned her head, nauseous from the pain, and threw up on the pavement beside where she lay.

Gritting her teeth, she fought through the unbearable ache in her leg and rolled to the side, pushing the man over and struggling to her hands and knees.

She moaned, closing her eyes and panting heavily at the sheer force of the burning pain that spiked through her body. She swiped a hand over her eyes, pushing aside her hair and the sweat and the blood that had dotted like freckles across her creamy skin.

Painstakingly, she crawled toward her purse. Her lame leg dragged against the concrete as she used her arms to drag herself forward along the ground. She cried out as she attempted to push her knee under herself in order to stand, as the blinding heat of pain flashed through her limb once more.

She the few metres to her purse felt like miles as before her shaking hand finally closed around the strap. She pulled it along behind her as she crawled slowly to the side of the alleyway, turning heavily and slumping unceremoniously against the cold concrete wall.

Panting past the pain and trying to control her panic to delay the inevitable shock for as long as possible, she reached into her purse. Her fingers grappled with the cool rectangle of her mobile phone. Her first few tries at unlocking the passcode failed because her fingers were shaking so badly. They felt stiff and uncooperative as she fought to correctly enter the four digit code. Finally, she managed to concentrate long enough to succeed.

She dialed the only name is her contacts list.

And waited.

It rang three times before he picked up.

“Bedelia,” he greeted, his voice kind and so familiar and she nearly lost her control right there.

Her breath hitched and she exhaled harshly into the receiver.

“Bedelia? Is everything alright?” He inquired, concern beginning to etch into the colour of his voice.

This time, there was no hesitation. “Help me,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“Where are you?” he asked, his voice suddenly tinged sharp with worry. She didn’t care whether or not it was genuine.

Her head swam. She shivered violently and her teeth began to chatter noisily. Shock, she self-diagnosed.

“Bedelia,” he repeated, “tell me where you are.”

“In the alley beside Ottavio Delicatessen,” she finally managed, recalling the sign hanging from the awning they had ducked under.

“I’ll be right there,” he promised gently.

She lowered the phone from her ear and dropped her chin to her chest, focusing on her breathing and fighting to remain conscious as she waited.

Her next thought was that she must have lost consciousness at some point because more quickly than she could have thought possible his large palms were pressed to either side of her face, tipping it up toward his gaze. He was crouched in front of her. She blinked, trying to clear the fog clouding her vision, and her head jerked involuntarily.

“It is alright,” he reassured her, brushing his hand across her forehead before removing his suit jacket and draping it over her torso to try and help her shivering. It was warm with his body heat and smelled familiar.

“Hannibal –,” her voice broke off, choked by a sob that tore up her throat. She was too tired to be embarrassed, her person suit abandoned.

“It is alright,” he hushed her softly, efficiently smoothing his fingers across her collarbones, down her arms, over her ribs and down her legs, methodically checking for major wounds with a doctor’s precision.

“Is this blood all yours?” he asked gently, still propping her head up with his palm so she could see him.

“No,” she breathed, eyes rolling closed of their own accord.

His hand found her swollen knee and pressed gently, inquisitively, and she cried out, unable to help the shriek that escaped past her lips.

“It’s torn,” he murmured, brushing her skirt back down. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”

Her vision blacked, and she felt herself teetering on the edge of sleep.

“Bedelia,” he urged, and gently shook her head by jiggling his palm which still supported her jaw.

“Headache,” she whispered.

He nodded. Paused a moment. “Were you sexually assaulted?” he asked softly.

“No,” she breathed, exhaling with a tiny modicum of relief.

“Wrap your arm around my neck,” he crouched beside her and slid his arm beneath both her knees. Her left one screamed in protest and she moaned her discomfort through tightly clenched teeth.

“Hospital,” she murmured.

“We can’t,” he reminded her, grimly. “Hold on to me,” he encouraged, and he lifted her up off the ground. Her tailbone was relieved to be off the cement but Hannibal’s arm dug into her back where the wooden plank had struck her earlier.

She grunted as he straightened out to stand, and tried to control her breathing as he began to walk briskly toward their flat.

“Almost,” he sympathized, as she clenched her teeth in pain.    

***

He gently guided her arms out of her blouse, and unbuttoned then lowered her skirt so she could step out of it. Unable to bend her left knee, he quickly divested her of the rest of her garments before lifting her and lowering her carefully into the bath of hot water.

“How many?” he asked, sitting near her head, one arm supporting her neck and the other gently swishing water over her skin.

“Three,” she whispered. “They lured me. Lydia Fell – the real one – she…she did something – something to…his name is Siniscalo – I…think she owed them money…lots of money…they were angry at _her_ ,” Bedelia tried to explain. “They thought I was her,” she insisted, voice cracking.

“It’s over now,” he comforted.

“One ran away.”

He continued to cup water in his palm and smooth is gently over the skin of her shoulders where the protruded from the water. “I will see to it. Do not worry,” he reassured her. She glanced at his face. He was so calm, so comforting, but underneath his control she could see his carefully hidden rage, his anger, barely controllable.

They remained in silence for minutes more.

“Up,” he finally murmured, curling his arms around her again and helping her from the tub as she grimaced as her knee was dislodged from its floating position in the tub.

He wrapped her in his bathrobe and, again, carried her into their bedroom. She had regained enough consciousness to begin feeling uncomfortable that he had to carry her like an invalid, her tattered person suit attempting to sew itself back together from scraps.

He pulled the covers up over her on the bed and then lifted her head up and helped her swallow the pain medication and gave her water to chase it. He opened a kit he had laid on the bedside table and retrieved a needle and a vial of sedative.

He filled the needle half-way, and flicked the glass to eliminate any bubbles. He reached down and steadied her shaking hand with his own, and slid the sleeve of the bathrobe up past her elbow. The needle slid into the crease of her elbow, piercing her vein easily. She sighed in relief as the warmth spread through her body, her racing heart finally slowing in her aching chest, and her throat loosened enough that she found she could breathe without choking. She felt him press a cold pack gently to her cheekbone.

“Rest,” he murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. His hand stroked her hair, pushing it back on her forehead before his fingers traced down her bruised cheek to cup her jaw. It was a loving gesture. The gentleness in his eyes was so apparently genuine that she had a hard time reconciling her husband and her patient any longer.

 She didn’t dare let herself be fooled. Not twice. Never again. Nonetheless, the confusion from his actions, her emotions, and the sedative clouded her mind and her subconscious took over, urging her to sleep.

She was vaguely aware of Hannibal lying down beside her. Most nights she was too weary to tolerate his desires for intimacy, but tonight she found she was grateful for his warm body pressed gently against hers.

Later in the night, when she awoke from a dull throbbing in her knee, he was gone from the room. The flat sounded silent and empty. She felt the fear creep into her bones. Bedelia reached over to his kit, still on the bedside table, and gave herself another dose of sedative. Blissfully, she floated back into sleep, escaping the reality of her situation for a few hours longer.

***

The next morning, he brought her breakfast in bed.

He made a cursory inventory of her wounds by the light of the sun streaming in the windows, applying cold to the blows she had taken the night before.

A low sound escaped his throat when his eyes fell on the angry purple bruises littering her stomach and back.

He gently fastened an expensive black brace around her knee, securing it tightly around the painful ligament.

He sat beside her on the bed and gently brushed her lips with his. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

He sat back and met her questioning stare.

“I care about you,” he said, as if in answer to a question. “Very much.”  He lowered his gaze. “And I feel…responsible for you.”

Bedelia closed her eyes, swallowed, and dropped her head back against the pillow. _Remember how you got here_ , she whispered to herself.

“Get some rest,” he agreed, and squeezed her hand. “I will be here when you wake up.”

As he left, he gently pressed the morning paper into her hands.

Before she succumbed to sleep once more, her eyes scanned the headline of the front page.

 

“ _Siniscalo e complici trovato morto la notte scorsa in apparente suicidio omicidio_ ”

Siniscalo and accomplice found dead last night in apparent murder suicide.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well, if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading :)


End file.
